Suspending or supporting thermally insulated pipes presents problems due to the fact that conventional insulators are not sufficiently strong for the brackets by which the pipes are to be suspended or supported. Therefore, pipe brackets are generally fixed directly to the pipe. This in turn requires additional insulation for the pipe brackets to prevent formation of undesirable cold or heat bridges. It is obvious that providing additional insulation for pipe brackets is quite expensive.
A pipe insulator for suspending or supporting a pipeline with cold insulation is known from EP 0 503 566. This pipe insulator mainly consists of two hollow cylindrical bush halves provided with an inserted circular segment of thermally insulated rigid cellular material resistant to pressure. This ring element extends over up to three quarters of the outside diameter of the matching cylindrical bush half. The outer skin of the pipe insulator is formed by a metal plate which at the same time forms the pipe bracket.
Therefore, it is the task of the invention to improve the insulating element designed so that it is easy to handle and universal in use.
This task is solved by the features mentioned in the characteristics in Claim 1.
Thanks to the alternating arrangement of dimensionally stable and flexible mouldings between two carrier strips, such an insulating element can on the one hand absorb forces to form a suspending or supporting section; on the other, it is sufficiently flexible to be used for pipes with different diameters.